Benjamin Franklin Cameron

Benjamin Franklin Cameron (December 14, 1890 – April 3, 1964) was an American jurist from the state of Mississippi. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1955 to 1964. The Fifth Circuit was a key court during the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s as it covered Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, all of which had varying levels of racial segregation. During his tenure, Cameron, a segregationist, often found himself in the minority of civil-rights cases, with a group of more liberal judges, known as the Fifth Circuit Four, overturning Jim Crow laws. Shortly before his death, he charged the Chief Judge of the circuit with purposefully assigning these judges to cases with the intent of overturning segregation.

Early life and career

Cameron was born in Meridian, Mississippi. He graduated from Meridian High School. He received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Sewanee: The University of the South in 1911 and a Bachelor of Laws from Cumberland School of Law (then part of Cumberland University, now part of Samford University) in 1914. He initially worked as a German and Latin teacher at Norfolk Academy before starting his legal practice in Meridian. In addition to his law practice, he was the football coach at Meridian High School for five years.

In 1928, Cameron supported Herbert Hoover and became affiliated with the Republican Party after Democratic candidate Al Smith supported the repeal of prohibition during the 1928 presidential election. After Hoover's election, Cameron was nominated as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi and served through the end of Hoover's term.

Cameron returned to private practice until 1955. In 1940, Cameron argued Opp Cotton Mills v. Administrator of W. and H.D. before the United States Supreme Court. Cameron represented a cotton mill and argued to overturn a minimum wage set by the Wages and Hours Division of the United States Department of Labor under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which he alleged violated the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Harlan Stone ruled against Opp Mills.

In 1946, he testified before the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Senatorial Campaign Expenses, which reviewed the campaign activities of Senator Theodore G. Bilbo in his 1946 re-election campaign. In addition to questions about his use of campaign funds, Bilbo was accused of an openly racist campaign that advocated violence to prevent blacks from voting in the election. In his statement to the committee, Bilbo stated that he believed in white supremacy and white control and that he wrote to a newspaper asking blacks to stay out of the "white primary election." Cameron defended Bilbo in that he felt the senator had always encouraged peaceful relations between races and that "outside influences" were trying to make trouble in Mississippi.

After Darby v. Daniel, Cameron often found himself in the minority on civil rights cases. In 1960, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Dixon v. Alabama that public colleges had to afford students some due process before disciplining or expelling students. In this case, nine students at the Alabama State College for Negroes, now Alabama State University, were expelled after a protest in which 29 students conducted a sit in at a segregated snack counter at the Montgomery County courthouse. Afterwards Governor John Malcolm Patterson ordered the students that he perceived were the ringleaders to be expelled. The court overturned the expulsions. Cameron dissented, writing that "They were accused and convicted by competent proof, including a picture and writings authored by them, of public boorishness, of defying the authority of the officials of their school and state, of blatant insubordination, of endeavoring to disrupt the school they had agreed to support with loyalty, as well as to break up other schools, and had openly incited to riot; and when their time came to speak, they stood mute, offering only one of their group along with the college president and two newspaper reporters as witnesses." Part of his dissent was devoted to sections on how many demonstrations were organized by advocates for the students. He concluded, "March 6, 1960, several thousand Negroes, including appellants and hundreds of the students of the college assembled near the steps of the capitol and approximately ten thousand white people gathered in the same vicinity. A large gathering of city and county officers and the use of fire hose finally avoided an open clash between the two groups."

The 1962 case James H. Meredith v. Charles Dickson Fair, et al. was a case in which Cameron was not assigned, but he inserted himself into it after the ruling. On June 25, 1962, Judges John Minor Wisdom, John Robert Brown with Dozier A. DeVane dissenting ruled that James H. Meredith could register at the University of Mississippi, which had denied him admission on account of his race. The day after the court's order took effect, July 18, Cameron, who was not part of the panel that heard the case, issued a stay. On July 27, the court vacated his stay. Cameron issued three more stays in the case through August, seeking to block integration at the school. On September 10, Justice Hugo Black voided all of Cameron's orders in the case. After Governor Ross Barnett personally blocked Meredith from registering, the entire Fifth Circuit heard the case en banc and held Barnett in contempt. Cameron was not present for the hearing.

In his dissent in Armstrong v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Cameron charged that the Chief Judge Elbert Tuttle would assign judges who had a more liberal view of civil rights to the majority of those cases, specifically, those whom he called "The Four." He accused Tuttle of ensuring that two members of "The Four", Tuttle, Brown, Wisdom or Richard Rives were empaneled in 22 of 25 cases dealing with civil rights while the other members of the court sat in the majority in only 12 cases. Rep. George W. Andrews, who once wrote "They put the Negroes in the schools and now they've driven God out," proposed an inquiry into Cameron's charges. Senator James Eastland, who headed the Senate Judiciary Committee, also ordered a staff inquiry.

Journalist Jack Bass found that Cameron's analysis was partially inaccurate in that he counted every phase of a case as a single incident and left certain cases out of his count. In addition, certain assignments were dictated by Cameron himself. He had asked Tuttle not to include him on any cases were Tuttle was also on the panel. Because Cameron insisted on later afternoon conferences, another judge on the court asked not to be on a panel with him. Two other judges were not assigned to civil rights cases as their recess appointments had not been confirmed by the Senate, leaving only four judges who were able to sit on every case with Cameron. In 1965, the Supreme Court reversed the decision.

Before the Mississippi case was sent back to the Fifth Circuit, Cameron died on April 3, 1964.